As once prophesied, the wheel in the sky keeps turnin’ … out lawsuits for the current members of Journey. According to Bloomberg Law,keyboardist Jonathan Cain has sued co-founding guitarist Neal Schon for allegedly racking up an Anna Delvey–esque lifestyle of lavish spending that has made him an outlier within the band. Among the points of contention in the court filing: Schon has ignored a $1,500-per-night hotel-fee cap in favor of accommodations ten times the price, maxed out a credit card with a $1 million limit, excessively used private jets for travel, created an unnecessary security job for a close friend, and blocked efforts to pay debts and expenses associated with Journey’s ongoing summer tour. The lawsuit notes that this public animosity between Cain and Schon is “impacting the band’s reputation throughout the music industry” and “such negative publicity may potentially impact the band’s fan base.” Numerous crew members have also departed from the tour “because of such tensions.” (Meanwhile, Steve Perry is somewhere else minding his damn business.)
A similar lawsuit between the duo was waged in early 2023, when Cain alleged Schon’s spending problem was exacerbated by his wife — a woman who used to be a Real Housewife and once famously crashed a White House state dinner. At the time, it became so contentious that personal guards were hired to prevent the musicians from provoking each other when they weren’t performing. Maybe they just need to kick back and enjoy some peak TV.
The recording industry’s three major label groups are uniting in their fight against artificial intelligence. Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group are suing Suno and Udio, two AI start-ups, for copyright infringement. The labels, aided by the Recording Industry Association of America, claim the firms have engaged in “willful copyright infringement at an almost unimaginable scale” by copying their music to train AI on it. Both Suno and Udio use AI to generate songs from users’ text prompts. In responses filed August 1, both Suno and Udio admitted their models trained on copyrighted songs, but claimed that training was legal under fair use. The RIAA called their admissions “a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit.”
The labels are seeking both an injunction to stop the companies from training on their music and damages for the songs they have trained on. The lawsuits argue that by flouting copyright, Suno and Udio “threaten enduring and irreparable harm to recording artists, record labels, and the music industry, inevitably reducing the quality of new music available to consumers and diminishing our shared culture.” Below, the latest response and everything we know so far.
The subject of the labels’ lawsuits are two of the biggest names in AI music creation. Both models allow users to generate songs based on prompts, like “a jazz song about New York,” as Udio suggests in its guide. The models can make songs in a number of genres, either using lyrics written by the user or generated by AI. Suno was released in December 2023 with a Microsoft partnership, and recently announced a $125 million round of funding in May. Udio was released on April 10 and counts musicians will.i.am, Common, and Tay Keith among its investors. “BBL Drizzy,” the viral song that Metro Boomin flipped into a beat during Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s beef, was created with Udio.
In very similar lawsuits, the labels allege that Suno and Udio infringed on their copyright by training AI models on the labels’ libraries, which constitute a large chunk of all recorded pop music. “This process involved copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies [to] generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings,” the lawyers claim. The lawsuits say “it is obvious” that Suno and Udio trained on the labels’ libraries and that when tested, both services were able to imitate copyrighted recordings. Specifically, lawyers allege Udio could imitate artists including Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, ABBA, and Lin-Manuel Miranda when given the right prompts, while Suno generated songs imitating the tags for Jason Derulo and producer CashMoneyAP.
Per the lawsuits, both Suno and Udio claimed “fair use” of the copyrighted music in previous correspondence — which other AI companies like OpenAI have also claimed in their AI training. The doctrine of fair use generally allows copyrighted material to be used without permission for academic, journalistic, and parody purposes. But the lawyers argue Suno and Udio’s training does not fall under that doctrine because it is “imitative machine-generated music — not human creativity or expression,” and thus, it’s use that Suno and Udio needed permission for.
Suno and Udio have never specified what music their AI models trained on. Antonio Rodriguez, an early Suno investor, told Rolling Stone in March that Suno did not have licenses for the music it trained on, admitting a degree of legal risk. “Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it,” Rodriguez said. “I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.” Udio’s co-founder, David Ding, told Billboard in May that his company’s AI trained “on publicly available data that we obtained from the internet,” adding it was “good music.”
Suno admitted that its AI model trained on copyrighted music in a response filed on August 1.However, the company claimed that was legal under fair use. “It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case,” Suno’s lawyers wrote, per Rolling Stone. Specifically, Suno argued it was legal to make copies of the labels’ songs for “a back-end technological process,” like AI training, when consumers would not interact with the actual song copies.
“The outputs generated by Suno are new sounds, informed precisely by the ‘styles, arrangements and tones’ of previous ones,” Suno’s lawyers said. “They are per se lawful.” Suno reiterated these points in a public blog post also published on August 1, claiming major labels see its AI “as a threat to their business.” In the post, Suno also claimed prior to the suit the company was “having productive discussions” with labels “to find ways of expanding the pie for music together.”
Suno CEO Mikey Shulman previouslyclaimed in a statement that Suno does not allow users to copy music. “Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content,” Shulman told Billboard. “That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists.”
Similar to Suno, Udio also admitted to training its AI on copyrighted songs in its legal response, per Reuters, on August 1. “What Udio has done — use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations — is a quintessential ‘fair use,’” its lawyers wrote. Udio additionally reiterated the “back-end technological process” argument. Udio further characterized the labels’ lawsuit as an “anticompetitive” action.
Following the initial filing, a representative for Udio directed Vulture to a blog post titled “AI and the Future of Music” that did not directly address the lawsuit. “Just as students listen to music and study scores, our model has ‘listened’ to and learned from a large collection of recorded music,” Udio said. The “musical ideas” its AI model learned, the company added, “are owned by no one,” and its model is focused on creating “new” music. “We are completely uninterested in reproducing content in our training set, and in fact, have implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices,” Udio continued. An RIAA spokesperson said Udio made “a startling admission of illegal and unethical conduct” by saying its model trained on recorded music, “and they should be held accountable.”
The lawsuits make three specific requests. First, they are asking Suno and Udio to admit their AI models trained on their libraries of music. Second, they want injunctions to stop that alleged training. And last, they are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per song — which could quickly add up to nine figures or more. The lawsuits argue the damages match the companies’ “massive and ongoing infringement.”
These lawsuits are the biggest action taken yet against AI-generated music. It’s an especially loud and notable show of power for all three major labels to be working together on the lawsuits. Last year, Universal Music Group sued Anthropic PBC, another AI music company, for copyright infringement in a case that specifically focused on lyrics. But these lawsuits are bigger and broader and could have major implications for AI and the music business. They follow a concern that’s been percolating across the industry after UMG made AI-generated music a sticking point in their TikTok negotiations and a group of musicians spoke out against AI-generated music. Groups including the Recording Academy, the Music Workers Alliance, the National Association of Music Publishers, the American Association of Independent Music, and even SAG-AFTRA have all made statements supporting the lawsuits.
RIAA’s chairman and CEO, Mitch Glazier, made clear in a statement that this fight is specifically against unauthorized AI. “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge,” he said. “But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”
Another ticketing platform is in legal trouble. The District of Columbia is suing StubHub for deceptive business practices over the resale site’s hidden fees. “For years, StubHub has illegally deceived District consumers through its convoluted junk fee scheme,” said Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb in a statement. The lawsuit focuses on StubHub’s “drip pricing” model, in which the site advertises one sale price for a ticket, gives users a countdown to purchase that ticket, and shows the much higher final price with fees only on the final page. The countdown, the suit argues, pressures consumers to purchase tickets without having time to consider the fees or compare prices on other platforms. In its own statement, StubHub maintained it was following the law. “StubHub is committed to creating a transparent, secure, and competitive marketplace to benefit consumers,” the site said. “We are disappointed that the D.C. Attorney General is targeting StubHub when our user experience is consistent with the law, our competitors’ practices, and the broader e-commerce sector.” The lawsuit charges StubHub with two violations of D.C.’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act.
As one example, the lawsuit looks at resale tickets for an Usher concert at Capital One Arena on August 20. The site first shows an allegedly “deceptive” price of $178 each for two 400-level tickets. Then it gives the user a ten-minute countdown and directs them through multiple pages — even requiring users to log in and enter payment information before they can see the final price with fees. The lawsuit counted ten screens between selecting the tickets and seeing the fees. And the final “fulfillment and service fees” on the tickets were $70.50 each, amounting to nearly 40 percent of the original ticket price. The suit also argues StubHub “misrepresents the nature and purpose of those fees” by not explaining what they are or establishing them as a set number or percentage.
According to the lawsuit, StubHub used fees in its pricing between 2014–15 but removed them after testing found that customers were more likely to purchase expensive tickets if they did not see fees. “StubHub intentionally hides the true price to boost profits at its customers’ expense,” Schwalb said. “The District is home to one of the nation’s largest and most vibrant live entertainment scenes, and StubHub’s predatory tactics disproportionately harm District residents. That is why today we’re suing to end StubHub’s exploitative pricing scheme.”
We rarely see these opportunities for bipartisan self-improvement, but we’ve got one right now: How about if everyone agrees to knock off the sensationalistic nonsense around the 25th Amendment?
Three and a half years ago, Democrats and others — rightly enraged about Donald Trump’s effort to seize power by force on January 6 — wrongly pointed to the 25th as a source of potential legal redress. (Impeachment and indictment, sure, but the 25th didn’t fit.) Right now, Republicans are having a disingenuous constitutional temper tantrum about Joe Biden’s cognitive ability to finish out his term. Both parties tried to distort the meaning and intent behind the 25th Amendment to achieve expedient political and rhetorical ends. We’d be better served by reserving the provision for when it’s truly needed.
The history is vital here. In 1965, less than two years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, both the House and Senate passed the 25th Amendment by the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote. Nearly two years after that, in early 1967, the amendment was ratified when it gained approval from the required three-fourths of states. The overarching concern arose from the horror of the Kennedy assassination. What if, we rightly wondered, Kennedy had been hit at a slightly different trajectory and wound up alive but comatose? What if any president reached a point of incapacitation?
Up until 1967, we had no answer. But the 25th Amendment established a procedure to transfer power away from a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The text is key: “unable” to do the job. Not “has declined from his prime and has trouble descending staircases and reading from a teleprompter” (in Biden’s case). Not even “is making dangerously unhinged decisions and trying to subvert the Constitution” (in Trump’s, back in 2021). “Unable.” Incapacitated. To borrow from a famous Supreme Court argument about a very different topic: We’ll know it when we see it.
And this, folks, isn’t “it,” or even close to it. Consider, again, the history. We’ve seen the 25th Amendment invoked four times to transfer power away from the president, each for just a few hours: in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan underwent cancer surgery (though there was uncertainty about whether he had formally invoked the amendment); in 2002 and 2007 when President George W. Bush had routine colonoscopies; and in 2021, when Biden had a colonoscopy. In all these cases, the president was under anesthesia and truly “unable” to perform the job. As in “out cold.”
We can imagine a circumstance where the 25th Amendment kicks in without the president being so obviously and completely incapacitated — a stroke or injury serious enough to substantially impair the person’s ability to function, for example. But we’re nowhere near that point with Biden.
Republican howling about the 25th is based on a palpably false premise: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president,” as House Speaker Mike Johnson put it. First, that’s just not what Biden said. In his letter announcing that he’d drop out of the race, the president made clear that his decision was based on politics, not competence: “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.” In other words, I get it; my party is all over me to quit, and I can’t win.
Republican logic also fails on a more basic level. While Biden is plainly in decline, it’s an overreach to claim he is currently “unable” to serve. Earlier this month at the NATO summit, for example, Biden was imperfect but obviously fluent on complex nuances of foreign policy. He’s not in tip-top shape, but he’s nowhere near “unable” to do the job. And even if Biden likely could not finish a second term ending in 2029, it doesn’t follow that he can’t serve out the six months remaining in the current term.
In any event, Republicans are wasting their breath with their cries to sideline Biden under the 25th. Most fundamentally, it’s simply not up to them. The 25th Amendment can be invoked only from inside the presidential administration. There’s an easy way and a hard way to transfer power away from an incapacitated president, and neither can be forced by outsiders.
The easy way is that the president can voluntarily certify in a written declaration to Congress that he is or will be incapacitated, passing temporary power to the vice-president, who then becomes “acting president” — as we saw in the aforementioned scenarios involving Bush, Reagan, and Biden. (You might remember that Vice-President Kamala Harris briefly served as “acting president” during Biden’s medical procedure in 2021, becoming the first woman to exercise presidential power.) When the president recovers sufficiently, he can so certify, and the job is his again.
The hard way also starts inside the incumbent administration. It requires the vice-president and a majority of “the principal officers of the executive department” to certify to Congress that the president is incapacitated. After January 6, certain members of Trump’s Cabinet briefly discussed invoking the 25th. The Biden administration has had no such talks.
(If you’re a fanatic for mind-boggling, high-stakes constitutional ping-pong matches, the process doesn’t necessarily end once power transfers over to the VP. The president can contest his sidelining by certifying to congressional leaders that “no inability exists,” at which point he returns to power. But, it’s still not over. If the vice-president and Congress disagree, they can again certify to Congress that the president remains incapacitated. And if the president disagrees, then he can object and throw it to Congress, which can transfer power to the vice-president by a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and House. I warned you.)
I don’t think Republicans are serious about the 25th Amendment. They must understand, down deep, how it’s really supposed to work. And what would the 25th get them anyway? Harris would become president for the next few months, and Trump would suddenly be running against an incumbent with access to the Oval Office and Air Force One, and the presidential seal behind her. Democrats were operating in better faith back in 2021, but they also plainly understood the stagecraft.
The 25th Amendment is one of our ultimate constitutional safeguards. We hope we never have to use it, brief inpatient medical procedures aside. If we ever do reach a day when the 25th Amendment merits serious consideration, it’ll be a scary moment for the nation. Let’s not trivialize it now by treating it as a cheap political gadget.
We’re sure the Bob’s Burgers character Jimmy Pesto Sr. is always getting asked about where he was on January 6 based on vibes alone, but it’s only his former voice actor who can answer in the affirmative.
June 26, 2024: Bob’s Burgers actorJay Johnston is expected to plead guilty on June 8 for his involvement in the riots on the U.S. Capitol, according to dockets reviewed by NBC News justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly. The expected plea comes a little over a year after Johnston was arrested and charged with felony obstruction of officers and several misdemeanors for entering a tunnel of the Capitol, assisting other rioters, and using a stolen police shield while battling with police. Johnston’s involvement first came to light when the FBI posted a photo of the actor while seeking information about people who participated in the riot in 2021. Online sleuths immediately recognized him as a bit player in Anchorman and Arrested Development. Months later, Johnston was booted from Bob’s Burgers. This is history in the making.
July 8, 2024: Johnston pleaded guilty to interfering with police officers at the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. According to the Associated Press, the “estimated sentencing guidelines” for the Mr. Show alum recommend eight to 14 months of prison time, but he technically faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. An FBI affidavit states that Johnston recorded rioters breaking through police barricades on his cell phone and held a stolen police shield over his head before passing it to other rioters.
In his plea agreement, Johnston wrote, “The news has presented it as an attack. It actually wasn’t. Though it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic.” He is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court on October 7.
For most of the past year, we’ve wondered, Just how much damage will the four indictments of Donald Trump inflict on him before the 2024 election? After months of war-gaming, we suddenly have newfound clarity. The pre-election fates of three of the Trump cases are now all but settled, and resolution of the fourth will soon give us the single most crucial pivot point of the Trump legal saga and the 2024 election cycle.
Let’s take inventory.
Manhattan District Attorney: Hush Money/2016 Election. The jury has spoken, and the former president is now a convicted felon. Our next order of business: Will Judge Juan Merchan sentence Trump to prison? Sentencing is set for July 11 — just days before the Republican National Convention — and this one feels like a toss-up.
On one hand, the healthy majority of New York defendants convicted of the same crime (falsification of business records in the first degree) receive non-prison sentences. On the other hand, Trump’s case presents obvious aggravating factors: his gag-order violations, his public contempt for the judge and the proceedings, his lack of remorse or acceptance of responsibility. Either way, watch for Trump to make a political meal out of it. If the judge does impose a prison sentence, Trump will remind his supporters that “they” are going to put him in a cage (literally, now). If the judge sentences Trump merely to probation, fines, and other non-incarceratory terms, then he’ll gloat and claim it was all a big nothing.
Meanwhile, the appeals process will play out, slowly. Given the novel charges — this marks the first time in U.S. history that state prosecutors have charged federal-election-law violations as state crimes or predicates — he’s got a better shot than most defendants have on appeal. But, on balance, Trump is unlikely to get his conviction reversed, especially at the New York State level, where 20 of the 21 mid-level appeals judges and all seven judges on the top court were appointed by Democratic governors. (I know it’s not supposed to matter, but of course it does; would we feel the exact same about Trump’s chances if the ideological stats were reversed and 27 of the 28 appeals judges were Republican appointees?) Trump’s appeals won’t be fully resolved by Election Day 2024, and he almost certainly will be permitted to stay out on bail in the meantime. Polling is inconclusive so far on the electoral impact of the conviction, but the soundest conclusion seems to be that it won’t help Trump and it might hurt him a bit. In an election this close, the margins matter.
Fulton County District Attorney: 2020 Election Subversion. This overcharged, overbroad, overhyped showpiece had been circling the drain for months, and now it’s clear: This trial isn’t happening before the election or maybe ever. The Georgia Court of Appeals has begun its review of District Attorney Fani Willis’s potential conflicts of interest and her out-of-court public statements. We don’t know what the appeals court ultimately will do, but we do know (1) it didn’t have to take this case, but it did, and (2) it didn’t have to pause the trial court proceedings, but it did. Neither of those are wonderful signs for the prosecution.
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If Willis is disqualified, her entire office goes with her, and this case languishes in purgatory as it awaits review by an independent prosecutorial board, followed either by dismissal or reassignment to another county. This would be an undeserved windfall for Trump and his co-defendants. But when an enormously powerful elected district attorney gives testimony that (according to the trial judge) raises “reasonable questions” about whether she “testified untruthfully” and makes “legally improper” public statements that could prejudice the defendants, consequences follow.
DOJ Special Counsel: Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents. The fury around Judge Aileen Cannon – calls for her impeachment or removal (a remedy that Jack Smith himself has not sought), fantastical imputations of corruption — is a bit overwrought. But she certainly has not been a paragon of judicial brilliance or efficiency. Nor does Judge Cannon seem to give a darn about trying Trump before the election. Indeed, recent news that the judge has postponed several pending pretrial motions confirms what has been clear all along: This one isn’t happening before the election. Moving along.
DOJ Special Counsel: 2020 Election Subversion. The most important of the four Trump criminal cases also faces the most uncertain immediate future. Someday soon — within the next couple weeks, before the end of the Supreme Court’s term — we’ll learn its fate. The Court will decide, for the first time in American history, whether a president (or any federal official) can enjoy criminal immunity for his official acts. Watch closely, because this will be the pivotal moment of the summer.
Broadly speaking, the Court’s decision could go either of two ways for Trump, leading to vastly divergent legal and political outcomes. Consider the possibilities:
Scenario A. The Supreme Court accepts Trump’s immunity claim on the spot (highly unlikely) or sends the matter back to the trial court for a fact-finding hearing about whether his conduct falls within some newly articulated standard for immunity (not at all unlikely). Those additional proceedings, and the attendant appeals, blow out the rest of the remaining calendar between now and November, and the trial happens after the 2024 election (or, if Trump wins, in 2029).
Scenario B. The Supreme Court outright rejects Trump’s immunity claim — perhaps by refusing to recognize criminal immunity at all or by creating some form of immunity test but finding that Trump falls outside those parameters. The case would then go back to the district court, where both Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan are hell-bent on trying Trump before the election. The judge would likely set a trial date in August or September, carrying through mid- to late October. In this scenario, Trump would be pulled off the campaign trail and relegated to the defendant’s table inside a D.C. courtroom for virtually the entire 2024 election stretch run. And a verdict — likely guilty, given the evidence and the venue — could drop just before Election Day.
Indeed, the differences are that stark: Either the case gets the boot and is mostly forgotten until after the election or it lands smack-dab in the middle of the campaign homestretch and culminates days before Americans cast their votes. There’s no middle ground.
Over just the past few weeks, we’ve gone from a morass of four unknowns to three mostly knowns and one still unknown with monster consequences. More than any other outstanding contingency — Trump’s vice-presidential selection, the candidates’ debate performances, trends in inflation — the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity will define, and perhaps determine, the 2024 election. Trump’s criminal fate, and his political fortunes, hang in the balance.
This article originally appeared in the free CAFE Briefnewsletter. You can find more analysis of law and politics from Elie Honig, Preet Bharara, Joyce Vance, and other CAFE contributors at CAFE.com
If you turned on cable news at 5:07 p.m. on Thursday, May 30, you watched the birth of a meme in real time. As the verdict in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was read out in court, talking heads chose to announce every single guilty verdict one by one, seemingly on loop, with each count sounding funnier than the last. (One NBC News contributor said “guilty” over and over for nearly two minutes.) When all was said and done, we learned the former president and presumptive Republican nominee was found guilty on all 34 felony counts … and we got steaming-hot, fresh-out-of-the-meme-oven clips of cable-news hosts. A new meme just arrived in the world, ready to capture ineffable moments like these. Below, a roundup of the memes we got out of the Trump verdict, both new and old.
Rodney “Lil Rod’ Jones Jr., a record producer from Chicago, filed a 105-page federal complaint against Combs accusing him and the people who work with him of being part of an illegal racketeering enterprise. Jones alleges in his complaint that he has “irrefutable evidence of: (a) the acquisition, use, and distribution of ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, and mushrooms; (b) the displaying and distribution of unregistered illegal firearms; and (c) the solicitation of minors and sex workers.”
According to Jones, as he alleges in the complaint, Combs reached out to Jones in 2022 to help him produce songs, but Jones claims the work Combs required of him went far beyond producing music. He claims in the lawsuit that he was tasked with procuring drugs and soliciting sex workers to “perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.” Jones alleges that Combs also required him to tape these sex acts and that Combs would “often threaten to inflict bodily harm” on him if he did not comply with his demands. Jones alleged in his complaint that Combs kept “specific bottles of alcohol designated for females” on hand and, “according to Mr. Jones, Mr. Combs forced all the women to drink laced DeLeon liquor. Upon information and belief, Mr. Combs laced the liquor with ecstasy,” the lawsuit claims. He also accuses Combs of sexual harassment and assault for allegedly grabbing him without his consent and forcing him to work while Combs paraded around naked. Jones also alleges that Combs once left him alone in a makeshift studio on a yacht with Cuba Gooding Jr., who he said then began “touching, groping, and fondling” his upper thighs near his groin. He said Gooding did not stop until he forcibly pushed him away.
February 2, 2024, in Manhattan’s federal court.
Ongoing. Jones’s lawyer has accused Combs of “harassing behavior,” including “manufacturing stories about Plaintiff on TMZ and dispatching his agents to harass Plaintiff’s 8-year-old daughter, the mother of his child, and ex-spouses, all of whom have expressed fear of potential harm by Defendant Combs.” Jones’s attorney told Judge J. Paul Oetken, who is overseeing the case, that an additional police report had been filed on March 3. Jones is asking the court for a jury trial.
When reached out to for comment, Combs’s attorney Shawn Holley provided a near-identical statement he provided to The New York Times on February 26, 2024. “Mr. Jones is nothing more than a con man, shamelessly looking for an easy and wholly undeserved payday,” it said. “We have indisputable, incontrovertible proof that his claims are complete fabrications. Our attempts to share this proof with Mr. Jones’ attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, have been ignored, as Mr. Blackburn has refused to return our calls. We look forward to addressing these ridiculous claims in court and intend to take all appropriate action against all who are attempting to peddle them.”
During my career as a prosecutor, anytime I worked a case involving a large mafia takedown, defense lawyers would sidle up throughout arraignment day and ask this one key question: “So, is this a tape case?” There’s no insider lingo involved here; tape meant “tape,” as in, “Do you have my guy on tape?” When I’d answer “nope,” I’d see eyebrows raise in a Maybe there’s hope for my guy yet manner. But when I answered “yes,” I’d typically get a quick nod communicating that the defense lawyer understood it would be all about negotiating a guilty plea from that point on.
Indeed, tapes are the prosecutor’s best friend — usually. But when Michael Cohen secretly recorded a phone call with his own client Donald trump in September 2016, he created a piece of evidence that could become a key part of Trump’s defense in his ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan.
It’s not all bad news for the prosecutors, of course. The tape confirms an important pillar of the district attorney’s case: Trump plainly knew about and approved of hush money payments to women with whom he had allegedly had sexual dalliances years before. But that was never seriously in dispute. Trump’s lawyer conceded as much during his opening statement.
Remember that the crime here is not payment of hush money — it’s falsification of business records around those payments to evade campaign-finance laws. The crime, in other words, lies in the accounting behind the hush-money payments. And Cohen’s tape casts doubt on a central element that the prosecution must prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt: that Trump was involved in the fraudulent scheme to structure reimbursements to Cohen to make the hush-money payments look like legal expenses.
Let’s set the scene for Cohen’s recording of Trump. It’s September 2016, two months before the election. Cohen decides — for reasons that remain unclear but surely will be explored in depth when he testifies — to record a phone call with Trump without Trump’s knowledge. While it wasn’t illegal for Cohen to record his client, it was bizarre and brazenly unethical. Ask any defense lawyer whether he’s ever secretly recorded a client and watch him respond like you’ve just asked whether he ever ate a banana with the peel on. He’ll be more confused than offended. Why would anyone do that? Perhaps tellingly, Cohen never voluntarily came forward with the recording. Rather, the FBI seized it from his office when they executed a search warrant in 2018.
Any plausible explanation here will hurt Cohen’s credibility as a witness. Did Cohen secretly record other clients, too? Did he tape conversations with Trump beyond this one? If so, did he preserve or delete those recordings? Any claim by Cohen that he was playing good cop and trying to catch Trump in the act won’t fly. Cohen stayed by Trump’s side and continued to do his bidding for nearly another two years before he flipped in 2018 after the FBI search.
The September 2016 call begins with Trump talking to somebody offline about unrelated business. When Trump turns his attention to the call, Cohen opens with “Great poll, by the way.” It’s jarring now, given Cohen’s all-consuming public hatred for Trump, to recall a time when Cohen was an eager sycophant, yelping giddily about any snippet of good news for the boss man.
Cohen quickly raises the then-ongoing effort to pay off former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to “catch and kill” her story — to buy the rights and then bury it, that is. (The McDougal payoff is not part of the indictment, but the judge has ruled that the DA can introduce it as evidence to support the charged crimes, which center on a separate but similar scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels.)
Cohen explains to Trump that “I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David [Pecker], you know, so that — I’m going to do that right away … And I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …” Pecker was the DA’s first witness at trial; he was the chair of AMI, the company that published the National Enquirer, and he worked closely with Trump and Cohen to execute the “catch and kill” strategy. Weisselberg is the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer, currently behind bars for committing perjury in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial earlier this year.
Read Cohen’s words again and ask: Who exactly set up the accounting behind the hush-money payments? Remember — the crime isn’t the payment, it’s the structuring of those payments to make them look like legal expenses. On the recording, Cohen (the lawyer) explains to Trump (the client) that he has spoken with Weisselberg (the CFO) “about how to set the whole thing up.” Trump is characteristically uninterested in the nuances. He cuts Cohen off with a bottom-line question: “So what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump obviously knows about and agrees to make the payments. But importantly, Cohen never actually explains to Trump how the payments will be structured. All Cohen says is that he and Weisselberg will “set the whole thing up.”
Moments later, after some irrelevant cross talk, this exchange happens:
COHEN: So, I’m all over that. And, I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be —
TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?
COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something.
TRUMP: [Unintelligible] pay with cash …
COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it.
TRUMP: … check.
Once again, the dynamic is apparent. Trump is fine with paying McDougal to ensure her silence. But Cohen is the one handling the mechanics and internal accounting behind those payments. If anything, Trump seems clueless. It’s a bit unclear whether Trump suggests they pay by cash or by check. Either way, Cohen has something more complicated in mind — “the financing,” as he puts it. And when Trump suggests a straightforward one-time payment (“pay with cash,” likely meaning pay up front without financing, as a former Trump lawyer has reasonably explained), Cohen blows him off in favor of something more complicated: “No, no, no, no, no. I got it.”
This, folks, is a problem for the prosecutors. Sure, they’ll advocate for a more favorable interpretation of the call. They’ll argue that the tape shows Trump knew about the McDougal hush-money payments (which he did) and that he spoke with Cohen about how to make those payments. But the tape makes plain that when it came to how those payments would be structured, transmitted, and internally logged — the actual crime charged, with respect to the Daniels payments — Cohen and Weisselberg led the way with Trump dimly apprised, if at all.
The DA’s case has come in smoothly, so far, and it remains more likely than not that the jury will find Trump guilty. But I assure you: Prosecutors wish Cohen had never hit “record” on that call with his own client. Even if Cohen’s secret recording is a stalemate of sorts — even if it cuts both ways, helps and hurts both sides in some measure — that’s a problem for prosecutors. They’re the ones who have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. As we prosecutors would sometimes say: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
This article originally appeared in the free CAFE Briefnewsletter. You can find more analysis of law and politics from Elie Honig, Preet Bharara, Joyce Vance, and other CAFE contributors at CAFE.com
Leak the Ana de Armas cut. Photo: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images
Over two years and thousands in legal fees later, we can all forget about the Yesterday lawsuit, much like every character in Yesterday forgot about the Beatles. The class-action lawsuit from two Ana de Armas fans mad she was cut out of the film despite being in the trailer was officially settled on April 12, according to Variety. The details of the settlement are unknown. Peter Rosza and Conor Woulfe initially sued Universal in 2022 after renting Yesterday for $3.99 on Amazon. They got an early win when a judge agreed with them that trailers are commercial speech, rather than art in their own right, and thus subject to false-advertising claims. Then, however, they needed to prove that a large group of people were falsely led to watch the movie because they wanted to see Ana de Armas, but when the movie is based on the Beatles, that’s a tough sell. The case was thrown out. Rosza and Woulfe were left with $126,705 in Universal’s legal fees. The famed Ana de Armas stan account, @ArmasUpdates, has yet to weigh in.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Jason Kempin/Getty Images, Scott Legato/Getty Images
Hall and Oates is dead; long live Daryl Hall and John Oates’s solo careers. As the blue-eyed soul icons feud over their business, Oates is now saying he’s “moved on” from Hall and Oates. Speaking to Rolling Stone about his new, unfortunately titled album, Reunion, Oates said he doesn’t see himself performing with Hall again. (They last took the stage together in fall 2022.) What’s more, he has little desire to sing their old hits anymore. “To keep playing them, for me, was no longer interesting,” Oates said. “I just wanted to do something else.” He explained that the duo always billed themselves as “Daryl Hall and John Oates” so they would be seen as “two individuals who work together.” “This is the ultimate expression of that,” Oates continued.
The comments follow a contentious business issue between Hall and Oates, which Oates told Rolling Stone is “very boring.” Hall sued Oates for trying to sell his portion of their business, Whole Oates Enterprises LLP, to Primary Wave, a song fund that buys music rights. (Per the lawsuit, Primary Wave already owns a “significant interest” in the group’s music.) Hall argued that Oates selling his stake would violate a business agreement between them and was even granted a temporary restraining order against his partner. Remember what the man said about money: It won’t get you too far. One issue in the suit is who gets to sing which old songs: Hall has said he doesn’t want Oates performing songs he didn’t write. If Oates means what he says about leaving behind their old music, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Oates added he and Hall are “going to work it out” and wished his collaborator well. “We have a different strategy for our lives, and we have a different strategy for our business lives as well as our personal lives,” he said. “And that’s that, so be it. We’re old guys. We deserve to be allowed to do whatever we want to do.” He’s gone.
Diddy’s residences in Los Angeles and Miami have been raided by federal agents, outletsreported on March 25. “Earlier today, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation, with assistance from HSI Los Angeles, HSI Miami, and our local law enforcement partners,” HSI said in a statement, according to FOX11 Los Angeles. “We will provide further information as it becomes available.” Sources tell the broadcaster that the raids are in connection with an alleged sex-trafficking investigation. It is unclear whether or not Diddy was present at either location during the raid. FOX11 footage depicts what appears to be Diddy’s sons, King and Justin Combs, walking away in handcuffs from Diddy’s L.A. home. Images from TMZ show Homeland Security Investigations officers and police outside of his reportedly cordoned-off home with at least two helicopters above the L.A.-area property. At his Miami waterfront residence, law enforcement arrived via boat, according to images shared by TMZ.
Quick show of hands: Who’s satisfied with the work done by our past five special counsels: Robert Mueller, John Durham, David Weiss, Jack Smith, and Robert Hur?
Anyone?
We’ve now got a meaningful sample size, and the conclusion is clear: It’s time to scrap the Justice Department’s special counsel regime. It looks fine on paper but, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the past decade, it just doesn’t work in practice. It’s not necessarily the fault of the appointed prosecutors, though their work has been uneven and flawed at times. The problem is the system itself.
The modern special counsel regulations came about as a political half-measure of sorts. After Watergate, Congress passed the Independent Counsel Act, which empowered the attorney general (with permission from a panel of federal judges) to appoint an outsider to investigate and prosecute powerful political figures, to minimize potential conflicts of interest. It made sense in theory — until reality intruded in the personage of one Kenneth Winston Starr. The infamous independent counsel began by probing a convoluted Arkansas land deal tangentially involving the Clintons, and he wound up writing soft-core porn featuring cigars and poetry books and pillow talk, plunging the country into a salacious, unnecessary impeachment.
Congress, scarred by the Starr experience, declined to re-up the independent counsel law, letting it expire with a legislative sunset in 1999. In its place arose a new set of non-statutory federal regulations empowering the AG to appoint a “special counsel” in cases presenting conflicts of interest or “other extraordinary circumstances.” The special counsel exercises the powers of a federal prosecutor, but without “day-to-day supervision” by the attorney general. At the end of an investigation, the special counsel must write a report “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.” That report goes to the AG and then, typically, to Congress and the public.
Since the dawn of the Trump era, special counsels have delivered suboptimal results and sometimes worse than that, both prosecutorially and politically. Let’s take a quick spin through recent history.
Robert Mueller, hyped as the steely-eyed savior of democracy, conducted a revelatory investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election but then spit the bit at the moment of truth. Rather than stating clearly whether Donald Trump had committed an obstruction crime, Mueller gave us mush-mouth, bureaucratic double-talk: I can’t indict the sitting president, and I would say so if I could clear him, but I’m not necessarily saying that, but I’m also not NOT saying that, essentially. Attorney General Bill Barr eagerly stepped into the void and spun Mueller’s investigation right out of existence. Mueller left us with a dense tome of a report about Trump’s abuses and zero consequences.
After Mueller, we were treated to John Durham. You remember the scowling, goateed menace who would make Trump world’s “investigate the investigators” vengeance fantasies come true. Turns out: not so much. Instead, Durham delivered one piddly guilty plea resulting in probation, two humiliating trials ending with not-guilty verdicts, and a pile of superfluous, regurgitated talking points about how Trump got set up by the deep state.
The Biden administration has given us three special counsels. Shortly after the Hunter Biden plea deal fell apart at the last moment in July 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss — who already was running the case anyway — as special counsel. That fixed precisely nothing. Now we’ve got two pending Hunter Biden indictments of undetermined merit, and distrust on both sides of the political aisle.
Garland also tapped Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate President Biden’s retention of classified documents. Hur’s final report recommended no criminal charges but revealed that Biden knew he had sensitive classified documents at his home in 2017 and failed to return them to the government — contrary to repeated public assurances by Biden and his handlers that his possession of classified information was unintentional. (Biden is on tape in 2017, shortly after he left the vice-presidency, telling a ghostwriter that he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs” — referring to materials on U.S. war policy in Afghanistan.) For all the substance in Hur’s report, it made headlines primarily for its excessively colorful descriptions of Biden’s age and spotty memory.
And then there’s Jack Smith. It’s too early to make a final evaluation, but it seems increasingly likely that he will fail in his quest to try one or both of his Trump indictments before the November 2024 election. In the process, Smith has flouted DOJ policy and principle by straining to try Trump before the election (while dishonestly refusing to acknowledge the obvious reality that he’s doing just that).
Much of the controversy around any special counsel is unavoidable. By definition, a special counsel exists only at the most fraught intersection of prosecution and politics, and getting rid of the regulations won’t make those tough cases magically disappear. But the Justice Department can do better here.
Recent history has exposed two overarching problems. First, anytime an AG appoints a prosecutor specifically to probe one particular person, there’s a natural tendency to go overboard. Starr is the poster child here, as he spent five years desperately pursuing the Clintons, all to uncover a handful of lies about a sexual affair. To lesser extents, Durham and Mueller strained to score political points apart from actual criminal violations, and there are legitimate questions about whether Weiss and Smith have bent normal practice in pursuit of their prey. I’ll cop to being less than a saint here myself; I took a similar approach when I was gunning to take down mob bosses by any means available. But it’s not the prosecutorial ideal. We’re supposed to start with the crime and pursue the perpetrator, not vice versa.
Second, the report-writing requirement has done more harm than good. It’s an ironclad prosecutorial canon that we do our talking in court; we don’t fling accusatory extrajudicial rhetoric against a person who hasn’t been indicted. Yet the special counsel regulations require prosecutors to do just that. Mueller, Durham, and Hur wrote hundreds of pages containing damning information about people who were never charged. It’s nice to have transparency in these high-profile cases — as a member of the media, I welcome it — but the DOJ doesn’t exist to write novellas, especially about people who don’t face charges.
The special counsel regulations, in sum, enhance neither performance nor perception. So here’s my proposal: We don’t need a special set of rules for potentially sensitive political matters. The DOJ should just treat those cases like any other. Personnel and expertise won’t be a problem. The AG can tap any of the DOJ’s 10,000 or so federal prosecutors to handle any given case, and he can dedicate as many resources as necessary to get the job done efficiently. Nor does a “special counsel” label enhance the DOJ’s investigative and prosecutorial efficacy. Both Durham and Weiss went from “regular prosecutor running the case” to “special counsel” midstream during their investigations. The new titles changed little and fixed nothing.
At most, a special counsel gains a bit more formal independence from the AG than a federal prosecutor ordinarily might have. But is that necessarily a good thing? Don’t we want the attorney general — the person who’s supposed to be directly accountable to Congress, the administration, and the public — to have the final say and primary responsibility? If there’s a conflict of interest involving the AG, she can recuse and the deputy AG can handle it. This happens all the time, and it works just fine. And the “special counsel” designation does little to enhance public trust in the DOJ. Did anyone feel better about the Durham or Weiss cases after their changes in title? Were any Smith or Hur skeptics won over by their status as “special counsel”?
Appointment of special counsel has become an all-purpose cop-out, a counterproductive crutch for AGs of both parties and for the DOJ itself. The evidence is now clear: The modern special counsel regime has become untenable. It’s time to move on.
Let her have it. Photo: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Kelly Clarkson may have secured the ranch, but she’s still trying to get what’s hers from her ex-husband. The superstar filed a new lawsuit against Brandon Blackstock and his father’s management company on March 11, Billboard reports, claiming they’ve been operating as unlicensed talent agents since Blackstock began managing Clarkson in 2007. That allegation itself isn’t new, since Clarkson previously won $2.6 million from Blackstock and Starstruck Entertainment in a similar ruling from a California labor commissioner last November, but Clarkson’s previous complaint only reached back to 2017, and she only won back payment from four deals during that time. (The commissioner rejected Clarkson’s claim over The Kelly Clarkson Show because Clarkson’s licensed agents at CAA were also involved.) Now, Clarkson is suing for all of the commissions and fees since 2007.
The new case will play out in Los Angeles court, not the labor commissioner’s office. That’s a key difference, since Blackstock is currently appealing the labor commissioner’s decision in court with a hearing in August. If a judge sides in favor of Clarkson in this new case before Blackstock’s appeal goes to trial, Blackstock would be left with little standing. And, of course, Clarkson would be getting another cool seven-figure check.
The driver in the Vermont crash that killed Treat Williams accepted a plea deal that will allow him to avoid prison time, WTEN reports. On Friday, 35-year-old Ryan Koss pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of negligent driving with death resulting. According to CNN, a judge ruled that Koss’s sentencing will be deferred for one year. During this probation period, Koss will have his license revoked and be required to go through mental health counseling and a restorative justice program. He previously pleaded not guilty to the original felony charge of gross negligent operation with death resulting, which could have meant up to 15 years in prison. (With the lesser charge, he will only face up to two years in prison if he breaks probation.)
Koss collided with Williams’s motorcycle in Dorset, Vermont in June. Williams was airlifted to a hospital in New York, and ultimately died at 71. Per AP News, Koss had known Williams for years through Vermont’s theater community, and considered him to be a friend. Koss expressed his “sincerest apologies and condolences” to the actor’s family during the Friday hearing. “I’m here to acknowledge that this accident occurred because I made a left turn in front of an oncoming motorcycle that collided with my car,” Koss told the court, “and it was my responsibility to avoid that from happening, and for that I am truly sorry.”
Williams’s son, Gil, attended the hearing and addressed Koss directly. “I do forgive you, and I hope that you forgive yourself, and I don’t want you to go to prison,” Gil said, noting that his family hadn’t pressed charges. Still, he added, “I really wish you hadn’t killed my father. I really had to say that.” Williams’s wife, Pam, was not present. According to Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage, Koss called Pam after the crash to tell her what happened. In a statement that was read aloud in court, she said she hopes Koss can forgive himself for what she described as a tragic accident.
In the moments after the verdict, Donald Trump would not be hauled off to prison right away. White-collar defendants are typically allowed to remain out on bail pending sentencing, which means, in the case of our former and maybe future commander-in-chief, that he could continue to campaign for president in the meantime. But let’s game it out: If Trump is found guilty, how long till he has to put on an orange (or, as we’ll learn, olive-green) jumpsuit?
The odds of such an outcome jumped this week, after a panel of appellate judges in Washington, D.C., rejected Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case covering Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. “For the purpose of this criminal case,” the judges wrote, “former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant.” Trump might seek a rehearing before the whole court or an appeal to the Supreme Court, but make no mistake: When (and it should be when, not if) Smith’s trial gets back on track, Trump is in serious trouble.
Ninety-nine percent of the January 6 cases that have gone to trial have ended with a conviction. Also, Trump faces a particularly unfriendly jury pool in D.C., where polls suggest as many as two-thirds of residents believe he is guilty. Trump’s advisers are treating the case like the threat that it is. They’ve told him bluntly that he needs to win his reelection bid in order to avoid prison time. (Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, declined to make Trump available for an interview, telling me that the premise of the story was “designed to try to undermine President Trump.”)
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the D.C. case, would set a sentencing date — say, two to three months from the date of the conviction. If the trial takes place by the end of the summer, sentencing could happen just weeks before the election.
According to federal sentencing guidelines, Trump’s potential exposure is very high, at least on paper. Mark Allenbaugh, who once worked as a lawyer for the U.S. Sentencing Commission, sketched out an aggressive calculation for me that would result in a recommended sentence north of 20 years based on the violence and physical injuries that resulted from the siege of the Capitol, Trump’s status as both a public official and the leader of the effort, and a provision of the guidelines that permits an increase in the recommended sentence when “the offense was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.”
Federal rules require judges to treat defendants equally “to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct.” Here, we should look at what happened to the hundreds of people who have been sentenced in connection with the siege of the Capitol. Most of them — 467 out of 749 people, as of the start of the year — have been sentenced to a period of incarceration. Some of the most serious and defiant offenders, particularly those who engaged in violence or were carrying weapons, have received lengthy, yearslong terms of imprisonment. Others have received fairly modest sentences, measurable in single-digit months — perhaps because they pleaded guilty or their misconduct on the day was limited. Still others, like the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, were sentenced to several years in prison despite the fact that they did not engage in violence and ultimately pleaded guilty.
Put it all together, and it is far from clear why a nonviolent foot soldier in a campaign that Trump is accused of setting in motion should go to prison but Trump, if convicted, should not.
Judge Chutkan may also have been the worst possible draw for Trump among all of the judges in Washington. She has sentenced every single convicted January 6 defendant in her courtroom to a period of incarceration — at times ordering them to serve even more time than the proposal from prosecutors. At a hearing in late 2022, she gave a 50-year-old Ohio woman named Christine Priola 15 months after she pleaded guilty to obstructing Congress’s electoral certification. “The people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution,” Chutkan said. “It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
The exterior of Federal Prison Camp Pensacola in Escambia County, Florida. Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons
The federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida — an all-male minimum-security facility that currently holds about 500 convicts — is an eight-and-a-half-hour drive from Mar-a-Lago, not far from the border with Alabama. The complex contains 20 buildings, a track for jogging or walking, and designated recreational areas for inmates to play a variety of sports, including basketball, volleyball, soccer, and tennis. The prison has housed a variety of white-collar offenders, including former New York congressman Chris Collins (who was serving time for insider trading before being pardoned by Trump), and it is currently home to former reality-television star Todd Chrisley, who was sent there after being convicted of financial crimes.
FPC Pensacola, as it is known, is a leading contender for the prison that would house Trump. The process of selecting a facility for a convicted felon usually begins in the Designation and Sentence Computations Center of the Bureau of Prisons in Grand Prairie, Texas, where a specialist reviews the incoming prisoner’s file in order to generate a score that correlates to different levels of security — ranging from minimum- to high-security facilities. The relevant inputs include the nature of the offenses in generic terms (in Trump’s case, fraud and obstruction), the defendant’s criminal record, as well as his age, education level, and history of violent behavior or drug and alcohol abuse. The BOP is supposed to place each inmate in a facility that is reasonably close to where he will be released; in Trump’s case, that would presumably be Mar-a-Lago, which Trump designated as his legal residence in 2019.
Trump would likely “score out” at a minimum-security facility under the guidelines as written, but BOP officials retain wide latitude to change these designations. “They can find excuses to raise or lower his security designation if they want to,” said Hugh Hurwitz, a retired longtime career official at the BOP who served as the acting head of the agency for about 15 months during the Trump administration.
The idea of Trump serving time in a place like FPC Pensacola, with its open-air amenities and mild climate, might be disappointing to people who would prefer to see him in the sort of remote, high-security facility that houses terrorists, but it would be replete with indignities for the former president. Minimum-security prisons are still prisons. “You’re still not free to go wherever you want. You still have people telling you where to go, when to go, what have you,” Hurwitz told me. “You don’t have your freedom.”
The building directory of FPC Pensacola. The facility includes a sunbathing area and four gazebos. Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons
What would the typical day look like for Trump? Inmates at FPC Pensacola are assigned to sleep with other inmates, either in a hostel-like room with bunk beds or in a cubicle. The day starts with breakfast at 5 a.m. The uniform is an olive shirt that must be tucked in at all times, olive pants, white socks, and black shoes, unless the inmate’s work assignment requires different clothing. (Cafeteria workers wear white while on duty.)
“Everybody that’s in federal prison is expected to have a job if they’re physically and mentally able to do so,” Hurwitz explained. “Maybe they’re working maintenance on the grounds — you know, cutting grass — maybe they’re working in the kitchen, doing dishes or serving food; maybe if they have some skill in plumbing, they can help out in there.” Inmates get paid between 12 and 40 cents per hour.
In addition to work, Trump could participate in vocational, occupational, and educational programs that are available to inmates to ease their reentry into society after release and can earn them time off their sentence. “Once he arrives, he’ll do a needs assessment with the staff,” Hurwitz said. “They’ll figure out what his needs are, they’ll make recommendations to what programs he should take in order to meet those needs, and then it’ll be up to him to take the programs. But if he does take the programs, then that will likely earn him reduced time on his sentence.”
Trump’s ability to communicate with the outside world would be extremely limited. Cell phones are not allowed in federal prisons, though they are often smuggled in to minimum-security facilities. “He won’t have legal access to the internet,” Hurwitz noted, and though he would have limited access to email, “it is a very old-style email without graphics and things like that.” “He will not be able to tweet,” he continued. “He will not be able to even get on the internet or Facebook — none of that stuff.”
It’s an open question how Trump would spend his days. After all, Trump — to be perfectly blunt — does not excel at spelling, reading, or writing. It seems unlikely he would be able to pass much time checking out books from the library or corresponding with family and friends.
The daily schedule for FPC Pensacola inmates. Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons
On the plus side, however, a favorite Trump pastime — watching television, cable news in particular — could be readily accessible. There are televisions throughout the facility, and inmates use headphones with handheld electronic devices that allow them to tune in to different frequencies in order to switch between sets.
Television figures prominently in the life of an inmate in a federal prison camp, as Elton Thomas, who spent about nine years in a camp in California, told me. He was granted early release at the tail end of the Obama administration after a lawyer volunteered to prepare a commutation petition for him.
“For the most part,” when you are done with work, he recalled, “the rest of your day is watching television. You watch a lot of TV.” In Thomas’s particular facility, there was a television that was informally designated for news, and inmates could watch both local news and the major cable-news channels — including CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. Hurwitz told me that the availability of these channels in any given facility would ultimately depend on “what cable package they have.”
Federal prison facilities tend to be spartan, and opportunities for Trump to improve his material situation would be limited, though informal economies could help. In recent years, the commissary at FPC Pensacola has not carried Diet Coke, but another Trump favorite — ketchup — can be purchased for $2.55. A wide variety of other items are available — including candy, stamps, over-the-counter medicines, and packaged food — but inmates are limited to spending just $360 a month. One way around this limit is for you to have someone on the outside deposit money into the account of another inmate who is not spending their full allotment and then have that inmate purchase items for you in exchange for a cut.
The commissary order sheet for FPC Pensacola. Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The commissary order sheet for FPC Pensacola. Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Keeping Trump safe in a facility like this would not be a straightforward process. Although federal prison camps are generally designed for nonviolent offenders, the government in Trump’s case would likely need to “do some very careful checking into who the other inmates are in that facility” in order to minimize the physical risk to Trump, Hurwitz told me.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service told me that the agency has “no existing policies or protocols” for the protection of a president in prison. Still, he maintained that the Secret Service “has developed protective models for some of the most austere climates around the globe” — perhaps most memorably in recent years when agents protected Joe Biden during a visit to Ukraine in the midst of the country’s war with Russia — and that agents would handle any situation that might arise.
“I will tell you, if you can think of a way to kill the president, we’ve already thought of it and planned mitigations,” Jeff James, a retired agent who worked for the Secret Service for more than 20 years, told me. But the possibility of protecting someone in federal custody “is something that, at least in my time, the Secret Service absolutely never talked about.”
I asked James to consider how he would approach the situation if he were tasked with devising a protection plan for Trump if he had to serve time. A minimum-security facility, he said, “would be our ideal scenario,” at least compared to other prisons, but the agency would still want to separate Trump from the general population. That could mean ensuring that Trump has his own area — or even building — to sleep in and that he has an on-site protection detail. “Our goal,” he said, “is that someone always has eyes on the people we protect with the exception of at night, when they’re sleeping.” (At night, protectees have access to panic buttons that they can use to alert the Secret Service if, say, they have a heart attack or choke on something.)
Dormitory-style housing at a minimum-security prison in Kentucky, similar to what is provided for inmates at FPC Pensacola. Photo: Courtesy of The MPM Group, Inc.
Inmates watch television at a minimum-security federal prison. Photo: Courtesy of The MPM Group, Inc.
“The folks in prison are a cross-section of society, so you’re going to have people that even in prison are going to love him and people who are going to hate him,” James said. “Just because they’re confined doesn’t mean we could cut him loose, because maybe somebody doesn’t want to kill him — maybe they just want to punch him in the face.”
Still, Trump has also proved undeniably adept over the years at cultivating adoration in improbable settings, from improbable sources, including tens of millions of Americans who have never encountered the sort of privilege that has ensconced Trump throughout his entire life. Maybe he’d be popular!
Even so, routines as mundane as food service in the cafeteria might need to be revamped. Presidents do not have food tasters, but in large dining settings, the Secret Service might “have the chef make up a several dozen plates for the dinner and then someone would just go pick one of those at random,” James told me, “so if that chef wanted to kill the president, they would have to kill everybody.” In a prison setting, “maybe that protocol changes so they prepare 25 trays and somebody just goes and grabs one” for Trump.
Inmates are served three meals each day in the Food Service building. Photo: Courtesy of The MPM Group, Inc.
Bathroom and shower facilities at a minimum-security federal prison. All inmates are expected to shower daily. Courtesy of The MPM Group, Inc..
Bathroom and shower facilities at a minimum-security federal prison. All inmates are expected to shower daily. Courtesy of The MPM Group, Inc..
Weapons for the agents would pose another dilemma. The Bureau of Prisons does not allow people to carry firearms in its facilities — weapons are stored in on-site armories — but the Secret Service might insist on this for the agents protecting Trump. That in turn would introduce collateral risks, like the possibility that an inmate might be able to take a gun off an agent.
“There’s a whole new set of protocols that have to be developed just for” Trump, said Hurwitz, who added that staff on site would need to receive additional training and that there would be significant expenses associated with the effort. “The biggest ones probably will be in any security upgrades or communication upgrades that are going to be needed for that facility.”
In the end, all of this would be challenging and costly — but doable. “The men and women of the Secret Service are so mission oriented,” James told me, “that if that became the mission” — protecting Trump in prison — “there would be people who would, frankly, embrace it, and they’re going to make a lousy situation as good as they can. They’re going to make sure that the president is as safe as he can be.”
It is also possible that Trump would ultimately avoid the modest confines of a minimum-security facility and, like former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, serve out his time at home. “I have to believe there’s a way between the courts, the Secret Service, the Justice Department — they will find a way to have him serve in-home confinement,” Hurwitz said, because “it’s not in anybody’s best interest to have him in a prison.”
The Secret Service would likely be lobbying in favor of home confinement too, James said. “He just sits at Mar-a-Lago — maybe they take his passport, they order him not to travel, and he just has to just sit in Mar-a-Lago the whole time. Because we already have that facility secured, it would be a simple task for us.”
One wrinkle: Mar-a-Lago is both Trump’s home and a lavish private club — far nicer, of course, than the “Club Fed” stereotype associated with minimum-security prisons — which dramatically dilutes the punitive effect as well as Trump’s isolation. The property boasts more than a hundred rooms, a pool and spa, two ballrooms, a nine-hole “pitch and putt” golf course, five tennis courts, and more on the 20-acre property. According to an indictment prepared for some of Trump’s other alleged crimes, the club “hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests” between January 2021 and August 2022.
The standard methods of federal home confinement involve an ankle bracelet on the convict, which alerts a probation officer if he leaves a designated area. The traditional ankle bracelet model tends to be “challenging” when the defendants “have large residences,” Chris Maloney, the former chief U.S. probation officer in the district of New Jersey and the district of Massachusetts, told me.
Another option is a curfew system in which the defendant is required to be on-site during certain hours. Maybe they can go out during certain hours of the day but otherwise have to stay home in the evenings and on the weekends. “The officer uses other methods to monitor that — whether it’s a home visit or calling them on the phone,” Maloney explained. In Trump’s case in particular, an ankle bracelet might not be necessary given the fact that the Secret Service would be in close proximity and that it would be difficult for someone as recognizable as Trump to go anywhere without someone noticing.
The judge could restrict Trump’s movements to certain parts of Mar-a-Lago, but in the absence of some strict conditions, he could remain free to enjoy everything the property had to offer. “Nothing precludes somebody that’s on home confinement from doing those types of things unless the judge adds a condition on something like that,” Maloney told me. “If they’re within their home — let’s say you have a well-to-do defendant that has an 8,000-square-foot house and has lots of parties and lots of people over — there’s nothing wrong with that.”
This does not sound so bad on its face, I told Maloney, but he offered a countervailing view. “After a few months — especially for somebody who’s used to traveling on a whim and going wherever they want to go — it gets punitive pretty quick,” he said. Even Mar-a-Lago, he offered, could “start feeling like a prison after three months.”
Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A home-confinement model could include allowances for Trump to travel to some of his other properties — including his penthouse in Trump Tower in Manhattan and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — with the approval of probation officers and the judge. Maloney said such allowances for felons with multiple homes are “not uncommon.”
Douglas Berman, a law professor and leading authority on federal sentencing law, sounded dovish when I asked him how he might advise Judge Chutkan. He told me he would encourage her to consider whether “the fact of a conviction alone, under these kinds of circumstances, is punishment enough” and whether putting Trump in prison for any period of time could do more harm than good.
“I somewhat fear Trump always ends up a winner in his own story, no matter what happens, so I’m not really worried about him,” Berman told me. “I am worried about the country.”
The prospect of Trump in some sort of modified political exile at Mar-a-Lago or a minimum-security prison is not likely to satisfy his most dogged critics, some of whom have recently taken to predicting that Trump will die in prison. But there would still be some measure of justice in seeing Trump in these loosely confined settings. He would be further stigmatized, and provided he loses to Biden in November, his legacy would be in tatters — a wildly unpopular one-term president, a political failure, a historically unprecedented criminal who tried to cling to power in shocking, anti-democratic fashion.
The other criminal cases against Trump may not significantly affect the contours of the result. A conviction in the classified-documents case being tried in Florida could result in additional time for Trump, but that could be designated by the sentencing judge to run concurrently with his other sentence, or it could simply be tacked on to whatever period of federal incarceration and/or home confinement he is already required to serve. Even assuming that Trump is convicted in the state cases, the state judges and prison officials would face even more difficult versions of the logistical and security problems that Chutkan and federal officials would confront; the most straightforward solution might simply be for the judges to impose sentences that would run while Trump is in federal custody, wherever that ultimately is.
This punishment would likely be much less dramatic, much less onerous than the supermax prison that many people have imagined for Trump, but it is also, in its own way, much more psychologically diminishing. The crudeness of the criminal-justice system has a way of flattening people, and at the end of the day, Trump may not warrant treatment as some sort of international criminal mastermind who could break free at any moment. He would be just another failed and frail elderly white-collar convict.
Killer Mike, left, at the Grammys Premiere ceremony. Photo: Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Just after he won three Grammys, Killer Mike was arrested at Crypto.com Arena, the site of the awards. On Monday, Mike released a statement explaining that there was “confusion” on what door to enter the venue before he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. He clarified, “We experienced an over-zealous security guard but my team and I have the upmost confidence that I will ultimately be cleared of all wrongdoing.” A spokesperson for him also stated, “The situation has been overblown but we are confident that the facts of the case, when laid bare, will show that Mike did not commit the alleged offense and he will be exonerated.”
Video tweeted by TheHollywood Reporter’s Chris Gardner shows the rapper, born Michael Render, being walked through the venue in handcuffs by police officers. “Mike, are you serious?” someone asks in the clip. “Yeah, I’m serious,” he replies. Mike was released later the same night, his attorney told Variety, adding that the rapper “will be celebrating his sweep tonight.” A jovial Mike called into the “Big Tigger Morning Show” on Atlanta’s V-103 the day after, where he brushed off the incident as “nothing” (other than having to remove his six-figure chain). “We hit a speed bump, and then we headed back to the party,” he said.
A source told Gardner the arrest was for a misdemeanor unrelated to the ceremony and is “a big nothing.” However, sources told TMZ that Render was arrested after an altercation outside the Crypto.com Arena. Mike had just attended the Premiere Ceremony at the nearby Peacock Theater without incident. There, he swept his nominations in Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Album, making him one of the day’s top winners. LAPD Media Relations Division posted on Twitter that Killer Mike has been booked for misdemeanor battery and would soon be released. Vulture has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department as well as representatives for Killer Mike and the Recording Academy.
Jacob Elordi is being investigated by the New South Wales Police after an alleged February 3 assault on Joshua Fox, a producer for the Australian radio show The Kyle & Jackie O Show, according to NBC News. On the following day’s episode of the program, Fox detailed the incident from his perspective. Allegedly, the show had gotten a tip that Elordi was at a beer garden, Fox went there, and as Elordi was leaving, Fox approached him while filming the interaction. “Officers attached to Eastern Beaches Police Area Command are investigating after a man was allegedly assaulted outside a hotel in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs,” New South Wales Police said in a statement to news.com.au. “Police were told about 3.30pm on Saturday 3 February 2024, a 32-year-old man was allegedly assaulted by a 26-year-old man. The man did not sustain any injuries.”
As played on the show, the footage begins congenially until Fox hands Elordi a Tupperware container labeled “Jacob Elordi’s bathwater.” Don’t have to tell you it’s a reference to Saltburn, which includes a scene of Elordi masturbating in a bathtub, after which Barry Keoghan’s character licks up the water, cum and all. Fox then asks Elordi to send the Tupperware back to the show filled with his bathwater. “Are you kidding me?” Elordi asks, before rejecting the Tupperware and telling Fox to stop filming.
From there, Fox alleged that Elordi, “gets up in my face,” and backs him against the wall. Elordi demands that Fox delete the footage, which Fox says he was fine with, as “the joke didn’t land.” “It’s like a switch went off and he became quite aggressive,” Fox claimed. Elordi tells Fox to go into his recently deleted folder. Fox said he felt intimidated so he would not delete the video. “I’m thinking, If I delete this footage, there’s no evidence that this encounter happened,” Fox said. “Then Jacob kind of just flips, and he kind of pushes me against the wall and his hands are on my throat.” Fox added that someone in Elordi’s posse pulled the actor off. Fox is lucky he didn’t ask Björk that kind of question.
For over a year now, Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of former president Donald Trump has been headed toward the shoals. In the past few weeks, the wind has picked up, and it looks like the whole case might run aground. The situation is already bad down in Georgia, but it’s about to get worse.
The DA’s racketeering indictment against Trump landed in August 2023 to wild fanfare. Willis hailed her case as the salvation of democracy itself. One media outlet gushed in an op-ed about her “ingenious” prosecutorial tactics while another hyperventilated over “Fani Willis’s grand-slam indictment.” Turns out it’s easier for a prosecutor to write the check than to cash it. Anyone can draft a glitzy indictment and get a grand jury to sign off. But six months later — on the merits alone, before we even get to the roiling scandals — the DA’s case has been a dud.
To date, the DA has handed out four embarrassingly cheap, no-prison plea deals. (So much for those grand-slam RICO charges.) Don’t fall for the cover story that these defendants got softball deals because they’re “cooperating.” As long as Sidney Powell continues to claim the 2020 election was stolen and Kenneth Chesebro maintains that Trump was within his legal rights to submit false slates of electors, then they’re defense witnesses, if anything. And while Willis was the first among the Trump-pursuing prosecutors to launch her investigation, she charged last and is the only one with no trial date. If you’re counting on a Trump conviction before the 2024 election, look elsewhere.
And now we’ve got a whole mess of extracurriculars that threaten to derail the case before it ever reaches a jury. You’re probably familiar with the broad strokes of the recent defense allegations about Willis’s personal relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she allegedly picked to lead the Trump prosecution despite his lack of relevant professional experience. The DA’s office paid Wade exorbitantly, then he paid for lavish personal recreation for himself and Willis.
But even before the burgeoning Wade scandal, Willis had displayed shoddy prosecutorial judgment. In July 2022, the DA got herself disqualified from a piece of the case because of a flagrant political conflict of interest; she had subpoenaed Georgia Republican Burt Jones, who was then running for lieutenant governor, and then headlined a fundraiser for his Democratic electoral opponent. That same month, Willis used her subpoena of Republican senator Lindsey Graham to solicit online donations for her political campaign. (Subpoenas are meant to gather evidence, not political cash.) And Willis made improper extrajudicial (i.e., outside of court) comments throughout her pre-indictment media-hype tour; at one point, she opined publicly that Trump had acted with criminal intent — the pivotal issue before the grand jury, which had not yet voted.
Now there are the new allegations relating to Wade. There’s much yet to be determined, but the known facts raise serious questions.
First: Why did Willis hire Wade to lead the Trump case? Rather than picking any of the dozens of deeply experienced trial prosecutors in the Fulton County DA’s office, Willis instead hired Wade and two other outsiders. This kind of thing happens sometimes if the prosecutor’s office doesn’t have the right people to handle the case or needs some specific expertise. But Wade is conspicuously underqualified for this particular assignment. According to his own website, he has primarily practiced personal-injury and family law. Well, his defenders note, the man was a judge and a prosecutor. With all due respect: not really, or not in any way that would prepare him for the task at hand. Wade held those titles only at the municipal level, handling petty misdemeanors or less. He has never — repeat, never — tried a single felony criminal case. Yet Willis selected him to lead the most complex and important racketeering case in Georgia history? Something’s up.
Question two: Why has Wade been paid so much money? Like the other two outside attorneys working the Trump case, Wade earns a set hourly rate of $250. Over the past two years, the other contract lawyers have billed the DA for about $73,000 and $90,000, respectively. Now let’s do a little exercise. What dollar amount paid to Wade would cause you to gasp? Got your number? Okay.
The answer: over $653,000. Perhaps he has worked more hours than his colleagues, but seven to nine times more? Willis herself, as the top prosecutor in the county, makes about $198,000 annually, but Wade brings down over $300,000 a year? Wade once billed the DA’s office for 24 hours in a single day in November 2021. If he actually did work around the clock without pause for sleep, food, or the bathroom, my hat’s off to him. If not, then somebody’s bilking the taxpayers.
Which leads to our final question: How much of Wade’s income has been spent on Willis? We don’t know the exact nature of their relationship; Trump and others allege it’s romantic, and neither Willis nor Wade has denied it. They allegedly traveled together, on Wade’s dime, to Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean, and on both Norwegian and Royal cruise lines. Whatever the specifics of the relationship, the problem here is that Wade has used public funds paid to him by the DA’s office to pick up the tab for personal expenses for himself and Willis.
After these allegations surfaced, Willis somehow made it worse still. Prosecutors love to proclaim that “we do our talking in court” (preferably accompanied by a dramatic lowering of the sunglasses over the eyes). This is more than a catchphrase. It’s an affirmation of the core duty to protect the defendant’s liberty interests and the integrity of our criminal process. Indeed, under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct (and pretty much every other professional code), prosecutors must “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
Yet Willis did just that. Days after Trump’s co-defendant filed the motion relating to Wade, Willis responded not in a court filing but in a speech from the pulpit of a historic Black church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with the cameras rolling. Willis told the assembled congregation (and the general public) that the defendants had raised allegations about Wade — criminal defendants are entitled to make motions, by the way — because of Wade’s race.
These public comments by the district attorney are anathema to prosecutorial ethics and fair practice. Willis, who is enormously popular in Fulton County — she received over 71 percent of the Democratic primary vote in 2020, then ran unopposed in the general election — publicly calls the defense teams in her highest-profile case racist. What could outrage a potential jury pool more than that? Various judges have slapped pretrial gag orders on Trump in his other cases to prevent him from making inflammatory public statements outside of court that could prejudice the jury pool. Now Willis has done exactly that.
Judge Scott McAfee has set a hearing for February 15, and we’ll see the live feed from the courtroom. At a minimum, this will wind up as an embarrassing episode that raises serious questions about Willis’s professional judgment. The issue could well force the disqualification from the Trump case of Wade, Willis, or both. And depending on how the judge views Willis’s church speech, the case itself could be jeopardized.
Despite her claim that she’s “being treated cruelly,” the district attorney is no victim here. Willis is not some civilian plucked out of obscurity and targeted for sport. She chose to run for office as Fulton County DA, and now she holds almost unimaginable clout; she controls tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and holds the awesome power to strip individuals of their personal liberty. If the district attorney wields the power of her office to do favors for her friends, to enrich herself, and to undermine the constitutional rights of her charged defendants, then she has earned the consequences.
